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Trump, Pence visit Palm Beach as Democratic critic attends fundraiser

Trump, Pence visit Palm Beach as Democratic critic attends fundraiser

President Donald J. Trump, far right, waves to his supporters on the Bingham Island Bridge as the presidential motorcade makes its way to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Saturday, Mar.18, 2017. (Michael Ares / The Palm Beach Post)

The Palm Beach County Democratic Party, meanwhile, tried to capitalize on anti-Trump sentiment by bringing in U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and a much-televised Trump critic, for a fundraiser in West Palm Beach.

Trump left his tropical White House for a 4½-hour visit to his Trump International Golf Club in unincorporated West Palm Beach and, after an intelligence briefing and phone call with Brazil’s president at Mar-a-Lago. He later ate dinner there with a pair of Palm Beach billionaires — Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

Pence, after appearing with Florida Gov. Rick Scott in Jacksonville earlier in the day, spoke at The Breakers to the Club For Growth — a conservative group that opposed Trump during the 2016 Republican primaries and has reservations about his health care overhaul plan.

“We’re going to have an orderly transition to a better health care system in America that makes affordable, high quality insurance available to everybody,” Pence said during the Jacksonville event.

After speaking at The Breakers, Pence went three miles south and joined Trump, Perlmutter and Ross for dessert at Mar-a-Lago. Pence plans to attend church in Coral Springs on Sunday morning.

Trump began Saturday by firing off morning tweets decrying “FAKE NEWS” coverage of his Friday meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and renewing his call for Germany to contribute more to NATO. The president then made the short trip to his golf club, where the White House said he had meetings and phone calls and would not reveal whether he was playing golf.

Trump friend and Mar-a-Lago Club member Chris Ruddy, the CEO of conservative NewsMax Media, posted a picture on Twitter in the afternoon of the president in the clubhouse in golf attire — a golf shirt, “Make America Great Again” hat and a telltale golf glove on his left hand.

While Trump was at his golf club, Schiff was about five miles away at an event that Palm Beach County Democratic Chairwoman Terrie Rizzo said raised between $15,000 and $20,000 for the local party.

“I know the president comes down here a lot and it’s a pain,” Schiff said to more than 100 attendees at the Bowery Live restaurant in CityPlace. “It increases traffic, that poor little (Lantana) airport that you have to close down. It makes a real nuisance. But I want to tell you how much I appreciate that Trump comes down here and plays golf. I would much rather have Donald Trump playing golf than in the White House.”

Schiff’s committee is investigating Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election and is scheduled to hear from FBI Director James Comey on Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that he was wiretapped by former President Barack Obama.

Schiff said Russia aims to undermine western democracies by making them appear corrupt and indistinguishable from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime. Schiff said Trump’s refusal to condemn Putin and his “nonsense” wiretapping claim further Russia’s goals.

“They could not have devised, if they brought their best scientists together, a president of the United States who would play more into the Russian story,” Schiff said. “You couldn’t have written a better line in Moscow. That’s the whole Moscow narrative.”

Two intelligence officials from the Obama administration — former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell — have recently said they saw no evidence that Trump or his associates colluded with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 election. But Schiff, in a brief interview after Saturday’s fundraiser, said it’s too early to reach such conclusions.

“I think it is well premature to be drawing any kind of categorical conclusion like that,” Schiff told The Palm Beach Post.

Asked if that meant Clapper and Morell were speaking prematurely, Schiff said: “I was surprised to see Director Clapper say that. I haven’t seen what Director Morell has said but Director Morell left the agency quite some time ago (in 2013). But I don’t think that anyone can say that categorically.”